Judge denies injunction request for two USC and

When they selected to continue their faculty careers, both USC offensive lineman DJ Wingfield and UCLA vast receiver Kaedin Robinson thought the courts and NCAA had cleared the best way for them to play a fifth season of soccer.

USC had told Wingfield as a lot, offering him $210,000 in NIL to be a part of the Trojans’ offensive line. UCLA, meanwhile, supplied Robinson $450,000 to be one of the Bruins’ top wideouts.

But after first seeing their waivers rejected in the spring, then suing the NCAA this summer season, a U.S. District Court choose has now shut the door on either Wingfield or Robinson suiting up this fall.

Both gamers had hoped to show this week in court that they had been deserving of a preliminary injunction that would enable them to play out the season at USC and UCLA. Their attorneys argued that the NCAA’s Five-Year Rule, which limits athletes to 4 seasons in 5 years, violated antitrust legal guidelines by limiting athletes’ eligibility — and thus, their NIL incomes potential. To block Wingfield and Robinson from enjoying this season, their attorneys argued, would imply inflicting “irreparable harm.”

But after a listening to was held for both Monday, a choose in California’s Central District court rapidly rejected those claims, denying the request for injunctive aid from both gamers, as properly as San Diego linebacker Jagger Giles.

Either might appeal the choice, but it’s unlikely that either participant’s case could be heard soon enough to play the 2025 season.

Others who have challenged the NCAA’s eligibility guidelines in court have had inconsistent outcomes. But in the case of Wingfield and Robinson, Judge James Selna held that the NCAA’s Five-Year Rule was not “commercial in nature” but moderately a “true eligibility rule,” and therefore was not beholden to antitrust scrutiny.

Not every choose has come to the same conclusion, as a cascade of related eligibility circumstances have been filed in the months since Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia gained a preliminary injunction in his case against the NCAA. Pavia was granted a fifth season after difficult that the NCAA’s rule counting his junior faculty tenure toward his general NCAA eligibility would unfairly restrict his potential to earn NIL compensation.

The choose in Wingfield and Robinson’s case was less swayed by that argument.

“There is a subtle difference between a rule that retrains NIL compensation and a rule that limits one’s potential to negotiate a NIL agreement,” the choose wrote. “Putting aside the NIL agreements, the question of whether a player’s time has run remains in full force. The eligibility question is not tethered to the question of compensation or commercial transaction.”

In Wingfield’s case, the choose also discovered that the five-month delay in Wingfield requesting a non permanent restraining order after being ruled ineligible in March weakened the urgency of his claims of “irreparable harm.”

Losing Wingfield will undoubtedly deal a vital blow to USC, which had been counting on Wingfield to step into a beginning function along the offensive line. Without him, the Trojans will enter the season perilously skinny on the inside.

Wingfield’s collegiate profession started in 2019 at El Camino College, a junior faculty in Torrance. He left El Camino during the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, then returned in 2021 before transferring to New Mexico in the spring of 2022.

An injury ended his first season with the Lobos before he completed a single sport, but he returned to play in 9 video games in 2023 before transferring to Purdue, where he began along the Boilermakers’ line as a fifth-year senior in 2024.

Robinson took a related path as Wingfield through junior faculty, spending one season at ASA College in Brooklyn before the pandemic, then redshirting for a season at Central Florida in 2021 before spending the next three years at Appalachian State.

Robinson was an All-Sun Belt choice at receiver last season with 53 catches for 840 yards and two touchdowns. He was anticipated to be one of the Bruins’ top receivers this season.